London 2013

Breaking news! The Olympics are coming to London, and are set to start Friday, 27th of July 2012. So, let's start looking ahead to London 2013; the year which won't be very sporting at all.

There will be no build-up to London 2013; I doubt if it will even affect anyone. It won't cause traffic chaos or lead to the people of London taking two weeks off work. Also, unlike the Olympics, there will be no-one running around carrying ignited fuel, which will travel the country causing disruption where ever it goes. It will be an event which will allow everyone to carry on their lives however they wish.

Halloween: The Pointless Charade

Every year, the end of October happens at some point; usually towards the end of the tenth month of the year. This is bad enough due to the fact that it means we are nearing Christmas, so the rate at which Christmas related adverts are shown on TV, increases. It also means that the clocks change and go backwards an hour. This is a mixture of good and bad. Good because we get an extra hour in bed on the last Sunday of the month, but bad because it means the following 5 months get dark quite early. Halloween also happens at the end of every October, and this year, it's on a Sunday, meaning this year we annoyingly have 25 hours of Halloween due to the sodding clocks going back. Typical!

A lot of things I have grown to dislike as I have grown up like Christmas, patronising children's TV presenters and boredom. However, Halloween has been something I have disliked, nay - hated my entire life. As a child I was forced by my Mum yearly to dress up as a witch for Halloween, or whatever she had decided to buy that year. I never went Trick Or Treating either. That was partly due to the fact I was a fussy eater and rarely liked any of the sweets strangers would offer me. However, it was mainly due to the fact, that despite the fact no-one could see me behind my green witches mask, I got very embarrassed. I didn't like Halloween.

That is one of the only things me and my Dad actually agree with. Neither of us particularly likes Halloween; especially the Trick Or Treating part of it. As a result of this, many eggs have been thrown at our house. Most years it is the same routine. Children ring the door bell dressed in ridiculous outfits. We say 'No Thank-you', then moments later a few eggs are thrown and then they run away. Children who come after that, normally get sweets, but only as a bribe to not decorate our house in eggs brought from the store down the road.

Since when has throwing eggs at a house been a 'trick'? A trick is putting a whoopee cushion on a chair or gluing a pound coin to the pavement. Throwing eggs at a house is vandalism and also known as 'being a completely spoilt bastard who has a tantrum because you didn't get a sweet for dressing in the same costume as a bunch of other kids, and in turn deserve to have eggs crammed in their eyes and be forced to eat the eggshells of a dozen eggs that have been mixed with dog poo from down the road'. Well, that's what I call them anyway...

Throughout my life, I have refused, as best as possible, to celebrate Halloween in any way. It ranges from dressing up while being a kid, to going to Halloween parties, to watching scary movies on Halloween and even eating chocolate covered in foil which is decorated in a Halloween-esque way. I fail to the point. I may have liked it if we took up the name which some parts of Ireland have for it: ‘Pooky Night’, but we didn’t, so we’ll never know.

What does Halloween actually celebrate? Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Easter celebrates the death of Jesus Christ and his selfless sacrifice for us. Valentine’s Day at least is a way of celebrating your love for another human being. Bonfire night commemorates the time when Guy Fawkes (from the era of 'The Stuart's', for a pointless history lesson about my name-sakes), tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament to prove a political point. Halloween is just there to fill a gap; and that gap has been commercialised like every other celebration.

Halloween is so commercial now, just like Christmas, but just not as bad. Luckily, by the time shops start to think about stocking Halloween items, they find they have little room because they had already filled it with Christmas items in August. If Halloween was in June, I expect the shops would have crammed their stores full of stuff as soon as the Easter eggs went.

I have one idea which I think shops should stock in a bid to make money. They should sell eggs without a yolk. That way, you can make a point without damaging property, but you are also playing a joke in that the home owner would think you have thrown real eggs at their houses. You see. I should be a big salesman in London, pitching ideas like that to a load of fat, greying men in suits. There is a pun about ‘yolks’ and ‘jokes’ there somewhere, but I refuse to find it.

Anyway, I know I am a cynical person, but I do think that if you are above the age of 16 and you don't have any children, you shouldn't be celebrating Halloween, and should instead be getting a job or be looking in the mirror thinking 'I really have messed my life up', while probably also thinking 'I wish I had a boyfriend/girlfriend'. If you don't agree, then well, good on you. You're a happily naive person who lives a life without any real direction or purpose. YAY!

As is evident, I don't write blogs to make people like me.

P.S. You can’t even justify Halloween by mentioning The Simpson Halloween Specials, because the can sometimes be rather unfunny. Shame.

100 - Love: From The Umpires Chair

I now have another year’s membership to the 'Singles Club'. Advantages that I now receive for being a member of this club for over two years include: An increased level of cynicism, an increased level of jealously, an increased level of hatred and increased level of loneliness, and also a decreased level of happiness and a decreased level of confidence. Upon joining the 'Singles Club', you will receive a temporary amount of sympathy from friends and the honour of changing your Facebook status to Single; we think of this a 'Badge of depression', which is visible for everyone to see. After a few months of membership to the club, you are allowed to post depressing statuses on Facebook and Twitter, but this privilege will be taken away after a year of membership to avoid people thinking you're being dramatic. When you have been a member of the 'Singles Club' for 5 or more years, you receive a cat.

Let me ask you a question: Have you ever been in love? A majority of people will answer 'Yes', with the more level-headed, single people like me answering either 'No' or 'Not entirely sure'. My personal answer is 'I think not'. Sure, I have said that four letter word beginning with L in a relationship, but looking back with the advantage of hindsight, I would say no. Otherwise, if that was love, it sure is very disappointing.

I am unsure as to what love actually, really, honestly, feels like. I know the meaning of the word Love is: "A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person", but otherwise, I'm ignorant to it. This makes me very intrigued and cynical towards people of a similar age to me who say they are in love. Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy for them (if not ever so slightly jealous), but how can they be sure? Out of my 150 'friends' on Facebook, an increasing amount of them are either now engaged or pregnant, with the one they love. Then the ones that fit into neither of these categories, but still claim to be in love, just broadcast it over Facebook through a number of status updates and display pictures of them kissing their loved one.

Nothing makes me feel like an old, moaning, lonely man than during the time I spend writing blogs of a similar topic to this; and I apologise to anyone who may become offended by reading this; however, what makes you so sure you have found your one true love? The one your heart desires? Your one and only soul mate? The one who completes you? The one who gives your life meaning? The one that caught your heart? The one you wish to spend the rest of your life with? And to anyone who answers 'You just know', I will brand you a liar. There has to be some kind of thought process. You don't just walk past a jeweller and say 'That'll be a good idea'. Please, someone tell me what it is!

Being the un-liberal conservative I am (no, I'm not referring to the coalition), I think people are committing their life too early; especially after watching BBC3 documentaries about teenage pregnancies. Now, I am aware that they pick the stupidest, most ignorant and extreme people for that show, but it is perfect evidence of being too young. Shows like that should scare you into not committing your life too early. It will not always work. If it does work - great, brilliant, fantastic! If it doesn't, you become a single parent and/or a divorcée before you're even an adult. My incredibly cynical mind cannot fathom how someone can be so sure at the same age as me, that won't happen with the one they love.

A paper demonstration of a broken heart

What gets me though, is why my Facebook page is left with the 'Badge of Depression', everyone else is changing their status to engaged and adding pictures of their latest baby scan. To use a metaphor I used last year in my love blog; I'm left stuck in a dark, shaded corner, watching everyone else being happy and making decisions which will influence the rest of their life. Or to use a new metaphor (which explains my blog title); I'm stuck up here in the umpires chair, watching everyone below play out their relationships, which may only last a few hits, or will continue for ages and suffer an infinite number of hits, while I silently judge them all. Surely, it isn't too much to ask for, for just one woman out there to find me attractive and a good catch.

As the 'mother' of The Supremes once said: "You can't hurry love, No, you'll just have to wait... Love don't come easy, It's a game of give and take'. It makes me wonder then, why even after Phil Collins repeated these gems of advice, why people still want rush into love, and why they are so confused about it not being easy. Too often I have seen people split up over stupid, petty things which are so insignificant, they can't even remember why they split up with the person, other than the fact they 'hate' them.

My belief is that TV and Movies have 'tainted' what people perceive to be love. Love certainly is not like how they show it; from my experiences anyway. It isn't all 'Will they? Won't They? Before they finally live happily ever after'. Also, love isn't all happiness and roses and romantic songs in Irish pubs like the movies suggest. It just is not a fair representation, and it has made people convinced that they can have a happy ending. The 'fairytale' element to love has been increased through movies and television in recent years thanks to people like Gerard Butler and Zac Braff.

Even these two fingers are happier than me...

That is the other thing that really gets me: Recently in a lot of American TV shows and movies, there are guys who have a similar hairstyle to me. Now, they seem to be always getting off with women and have ability to woe any female that they want. Just once, I would love for my hair to possess that kind of power. Even when I spray myself with Lynx deodorant, I don't seem to become a magnet for half clothed women; like the adverts suggest. It is all just lies!

I have been reading up about some of the best (well, worst) marriage proposals, and I have encountered many bad ones. The best (well, worst) one that I found was a man who left an engagement ring in a pile of dog poo. A couple’s dog had left a mess in the garden, so before he asked her to clean it up, he placed the ring on top of it. He then stood behind her as she went to clean it and proposed. That now means that every other proposal of marriage can be considered as romantic in comparison.

I have two ideas of ways in which I could propose to a woman. Don't sit there and snigger at the possibility of me finding someone who is willing to put up with me - it is possible, I'm sure! The first idea is simple; you create a Facebook event for your wedding, and only invite them. If it works, you can invite more people to the event. If it doesn't work, you either just simply delete all evidence of it or postpone the date and ask them a few months later.

The second idea would be to kidnap them as they left work and bundle them into the boot of a car. You drive around for a few hours with them kicking and screaming, until you arrive at a beautiful destination, in the middle of nowhere with the sunset gleaming across the beautiful scenery. You then open the boot and they will be incredibly relieved to see you. You then lay out a romantic picnic with champagne and pop the question. However, the key is to not actually tell them it was you that kidnapped them until many years later when you're married and it's too late. Maybe on your death bed.

Example of a beautiful sunset scenery. My own, personal photograph. Was going to use for background, but HTML sucks...

If you wish to date me, you have to be willing to settle for all my faults:

• I am cynical.
• I moan rather a lot.
• I am slightly over-weight and not much to look at.
• I can sulk, for days.
• I have low self belief
• Chances are, one of your friends will really irritate me.
• I have very little previous experience with love, and will have to be taught.

And all my merits:

• I have hair.
• I can, on occasion, be funny.
• I can be nice and rather lovely when in a good mood.
• I have a car.

If you can settle for these, please do not hesitate to contact me.

P.S. Notice I have now redesigned my blog page. PLEASE, tell me what you think of it?

Valaween

Valentine’s Day is upon us and it is the day where people confess their love for each other or celebrate the love in which they have. It is a day in which many couples will go to the cinema and share a box of popcorn. Others will go to expensive restaurants and have a meal while the sexual tension builds. Chocolates and flowers are given, wrapped in pretty red paper and cuddly toys with 'I LOVE YOU' written on them, along with giant cards containing cheesy prose to explain how much you love them, will be given. For people in love, this sugar-coated day adds brightness to dull winters. For people who are not in love, like the writer of this very sentence, it is the cruellest day on the calendar. I don’t like Valentine’s Day believe it or not, which is one reason why I’ve affectionately named this blog ‘Valaween’. I shall now explain why so.

February the 14th is the date which I, like millions of other single people, dread. The celebration is named after a saint who had absolutely nothing to do with romance either, thus making the day a bit of a fraud. The amount of heart-based gifts which you see in the shops that are overpriced for the poorly-made crap they really are is quite silly. Red mugs, giant cards, me-to-you bears, balloons, jewellery and numerous other gifts of an erotic and 18+ nature. These are all things which are supposed to show how much you love the receiver of these gifts.

I suppose you could argue that I am lucky to be single to be on this day. I have not got to worry about whether a cuddly toy and box of chocolates appropriately send a message of how much I love them. I haven’t got to worry about what stage of the relationship we’re in and whether or not the card is a sufficient enough size. What if she gets me a bigger one with glitter? I’d feel like a complete idiot after giving her a £2.99 card from down the road. These are all worries I have not had to have. Still, I don’t like Valentine’s Day.

You may have noticed that I am of the cynical nature when it comes to this day. This is possibly because I have actually always been single on this day of 'love' or, maybe because I have actually never received a valentines card or present from a lover. I have however received presents and cards from friends who are sympathetic of the fact that I am going through another year of loneliness. These gifts usually come from friends who are in relationships so show pity by giving cards or, in the case of this year, a lovely single red plastic rose. I don't wish to come across as ungrateful, because I am grateful for their efforts to cheer me up, but you can't help but notice it is a sympathy present.
Another year has gone past where I receive no Valentines cards from a secret lover which I have to try and figure out like an episode of Poirot, in which no-one dies but yet everyone is still a suspect. I suppose, what with Valentine’s Day falling on a Sunday this year and there being no post on Sundays, this imaginative card could come on Monday. I mean, I could get a card. An average of 1 billion cards are sent each year on Valentine’s Day, and yet we all I know that I won’t be getting any of them, yet again.

Valentine’s Day has actually always seemed very pointless day in my personal opinion. Essentially, the day is for people to tell other people that they love them. Why make it specific to one day? This day needs to be removed from the calendar and have February the 14th as a normal, boring day. Love should be celebrated every single day of every single year, not just because Hallmark thinks you should in order for them to sell more cards. I know if I was in a relationship, I would be celebrating that fact every single morning - I would feel so lucky, to actually have a girlfriend.
Being single is a hard thing to be during the week leading up Valentine’s Day and the day itself. Where ever you go, you are constantly reminded that it is soon the day of love and you are still single. Every ad break on the Telly or Radio has adverts for cheep roses at Tesco's or personalised cards from Moonpig for the special occasion. Every shop you walk past has its windows covered with red hearts and 'HAPPY VALENTINES DAY' in big letters. Friends talk to you about their plans for Valentine’s Day and what they will be doing with their 'other half', insinuating that when they're with them, they feel complete - soppy gits!

I'm not going to bore you with my tragic life story, how unlucky I am with love and how lonely I am. However, I did stupidly worked out the other day that I have been single for 20 months. I also, with depressing results, worked out how much of my life so far has been spent 'in love' and the result wasn't even 6 months. Maybe the fact I am single is because I never send on those texts or e-mails. You know those one that say ‘Pass this on to seven people in the next 33 minutes or no-one will love you for 9 years.’ I never pass them on. Maybe the curse is coming true.

Don't worry though, because rumour has it that I am in a secret relationship with my best friend. Well, it seems that rumours are as close as I get to relationships these days. I am (Infact we both are) single despite rumours. Whoever would have thought that rumours might not be true? To have a little mini rant on the subject: How shallow are these people? “Oh look, they’re sitting next to each other again. They’re definitely in love.” If that is evidence of people being in love, then the world would be a much happier place. Anyway, slightly off topic.

Here is one piece of advice for you. When girls say 'I love a man with a sense of humour and who is kind' they clearly do not mean it. I'm humorous and I am actually a very nice person, and look at me. Single. Lonely. Depressed. Resentful. Jealous. Wishing my life was like the life of characters on Scrubs. What girls really want is some guy who is their ideal of being ‘fit’, with a nice butt and caressable hair (my hair is nice too). I don’t come into the category of ‘fit’ though; thus why I am single really. Humour and niceness is not enough.

You would have thought I’d be great catch with the ladies. I even quite like watching ‘Twilight’ or ‘New Moon’. Surely that would make me a perfect choice. Maybe if I had the giant eyebrows, sparkled in the sunlight and had a pale complexion like Robert Pattinson, or the torso Taylor Lautner I would have better luck. I would be more than willing to sit and watch the DVD, so bare that in mind ladies...

I am even cynical of dating websites. A load of data on a database is not the way to find love. How depressing is that? Saying that 'I found love through a website creating a query of facts from my own personality and comparing it to other data on Microsoft Access' is actually quite tragic. Thus why, when I'm 18, I'm not going to even contemplate going on one of them websites. I do not think I am that desperate. Not yet at least anyway.

I am sorry to point this out, but while everyone is out on dates with the 'love of their life', you are sat there reading this blog. Depressing isn't it. You're probably sat at home listening to songs by McFly or the Goo Goo Dolls, maybe OneRepublic or maybe you're treating yourself to extra special depression by listening to Maroon 5. I know that is what I plan to do. The best way to get through the day though, is to just shut your eyes. Pretend the day is just an ordinary day. If you have to, draw the curtains and hold the bed duvet over your head until February the 15th comes around. Also, don't ask how your friends how Valentines was if they're in love; it will only depress you. If they tell you, don't listen: just nod, laugh and smile occasionally and then end the conversation by saying 'Aww sweet'. It has never failed for me.

Whatever you do though, do not make the same mistake as I did last year and spend Valentine’s Day with friends who are in a relationship. What was sold to you as a way to get through the day enjoyably, turned out to be the most depressing way to spend the day. Spending Valentine’s Day watching people in love? How stupid was I? It's like eating your Chocolate Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday infront of your diabetic friend who isn't allowed to eat chocolate.

If you're reading this on Valentine’s Day, I feel your pain, I really do. Sitting at home at your computer reading a blog by a 17 year old, which is about his take on love and Valentine’s Day, it is depressing. I hope the day passes quickly for you and don't get too miserable. If you're reading this blog after Valentine’s Day, I hope you enjoyed your date you lucky sod. I hope you've got chapped lips. Did you even spare a thought for us 'Singletons'? I thought not.
Don't worry though, as a reward, on Tuesday it is Pancake Day. To celebrate surviving another Valentine’s Day, you can sit and eat Pancakes, on your own. Don't think of that as a negative though, it just means you haven't got to share the pancake goodness with some greedy sod.

Seeing as I am single, and have been for quite some time, I am advertising myself on my blog now. So: If you're an attractive, sarcastic, clever girl who is single and is interested in a slightly over-weight teenage boy who spends most of his time writing and making everything into innuendos, or know someone who is, then please do contact me.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy/enjoyed your day.
Remember, even though I really hate love, Stuy loves you!

The Shame Of Britain Awards

Just to start, this in no way is mocking The Pride Of Britain Awards, just merely an idea which I've had, in which we can name and shame some of Britain's more shocking people. It can be made as a follow-up to Crimewatch if we wanted. It'd also be just as popular (if not more) than the Pride Of Britain Awards because it'd appeal to the Jeremy Kyle audience who like to watch dysfunctional people be humiliated infront of a national audience.

It would still be a very similar format, with Carol Vorderman wearing a skin tight dress, and he celebrity element would still be there; all sitting around tables with bottles of wine and piles of used tissues, which I assume where used for tears. Gordon Brown would still sit at the front trying to grin, Mr Twat (A.K.A. Piers Morgan) would still try and get in every camera shot he possibly could and Simon Cowell would still be there for everyone to make snide comments about. The event wouldn't be opened by a Dance group called Diversity, but instead a Dance group called Intolerance.

The idea would not to give them awards and hailing them a 'Hero' of our time, but would instead be given an envelope. Within the envelope, would be their jail sentence written on a piece of card. The card wouldn't be given to them by celebrities, and would instead be 'given' to them by footballers. Maybe not 'given', more tied around footballs and the footballers kick the ball in their face.

Now these people have done bad things, I'm not going to ask footballers to kick balls as hard as they can in the faces of normal people. People who have stolen handbags from old ladies, murders of single mums and hit and run drivers are smacked in the face with a ball inviting them to do N number of years inside a prison at Her Majesties Pleasure. These people are locked in cages at the side of the stage and are not allowed to look at the celebrities otherwise they get tasered in the eyes. Cruel, I know.
There would still be tears, so if you want a good cry, you could still watch this show. However, you wouldn't be crying with happiness and pride, but instead disgust and because you’ll find the tales repulsive, even if you have only got a small amount of morals. The good outcome of this idea would be that the criminals would be punished, and crime wouldn't be glamorised, and only the criminal minds who want a peak of Carol Vordermen's cleavage would commit crimes. Or at least that's what the idea is anyway.

This version would also make all the people who have done remarkable things, like rescuing families from over turned cars, campaigning for Cancer charities and being constantly selfless, look even better and make them more inspirational to people to be nicer and live in a world of harmony, or we can at least hope. Anyway, that's enough on the Shame Of Britain Awards, and now onto something much more positive, The Pride Of Britain Awards.

In a time where everyone is down and depressed, these kind of inspirational stories are heart-warming that people can actually be nice; someone doing the selfless act of running across a Motorway to save a family from their crashed car and a young boy who since getting extreme Leukaemia, has become very confident and is now a main campaigner for Great Ormonds Street Hospital. It's these kinds of stories that make you forget the bad, and hammer in the good points of humanity. Selfless teenagers are quite common also, which is surprising because from what the Media has told us, all teenagers are drunk and drugged up, and if they're female - pregnant.

Being my cynical self, I always think up negative points, and I like to play a game called 'Spot The Irony'. Naomi Cambell giving an ex-convict an award for turning his life around? Surely not! A bit of favouritism for Cheryl Cole aswell from the producers -not only did she give an award to someone with some of the other Girls Aloud members, but she also gave another award with the X-Factor entourage - I think she's after Vorderman's job.

Now I'm off too contact some TV Executives, and hope no-one has taken any offence to anything.

P.S. How can Gordon Brown still look like such a mug when he gives the inventor of the MRI machine an award?

P.P.S. Blog special coming soon.

Celebration Of One Year Of My Blog Part 1

It's been a year. 27th September 2008 was when I posted my first blog, about reality television and having a good rant about it, and a year later, I'm still ranting about it. It started out as an ICT project, to update a blog over a period of six weeks, but it seems I got quite into it and here I am. Okay, I'm the only person on this world that actually cares about 'celebrating' the age of a blog. I suppose there aren't many people that would be sad enough to celebrate a website lasting a year.

In that year of ranting about various things and people, moaning about my non-existent love life and boring you with a lesson-by-lesson account of my driving lessons, it's accounted to 59 blogs (not including this one). 11 of those blogs have mentioned the words Jade Goody and included at least a few lines ranting about her time in the media spotlight and not being very sympathetic of her being dead. Within those 59 I have also clocked up 46, 587 words, a number of which were probably words you probably couldn't repeat to a 10 year old child.

Doing these blogs isn't just a way for me to vent my anger in a way in which no-one gets hurt and that can occasionally contain the odd bit of mild humour. It's actually a way (if only to myself) proving my writing ability, especially after a knock to my confidence with getting an E in AS English. It's a way for me improve myself, and if you compare my more recent blogs to my first blogs, you can see a change in my sophistication, or at least that's what I see.

Something that I think comes across in my blogs a lot is that I can be slightly cynical. I say slightly cynical, I am actually very cynical. Infact, I'm so cynical that I actually think that Captain Birdseye was only invented to give old fat men with a white beard who were too drunk to play Father Christmas, something to do and that Global Warming would be happening even if Jeremy Clarkson was never born. I also have moments where I think I've just had a stroke of Comedy genius, but turns out it wasn't that funny. An example of this is when I thought up the Captain Birdseye comment a few days ago; I actually had to walk away from my laptop for a few minutes to calm down as I was laughing so much. Turns out, it's not actually that funny a comment.

Something that unfortunately seems to come out in my blog is that I'm a bastard. In the technical sense of the word, I am, but in the modern sense of the word, I'm not. I am actually a rather nice person, honestly. Why I come across as a bit of a bastard is probably because it's hard to be negative about everything and having strong opinions against the silliest of things and still come across as 'an okay guy'.

Every so often in a blog, I write something which I quite like, and makes me laugh. One of my favourites is in a blog which I moaning about the climate of fear we find ourselves in, with constant worry from the possibility of a terrorist attack. "Once upon a time, the Wolf went to extreme lengths to see what was in Little Red Ridding Hoods basket, but now he has to call the Bomb Disposal Unit..." in an attempt to put a mirror up to society and show them how paranoid they are. That's now a line I try and mention at any convenient point.

Assuming you're reading this on my blog, and not on Facebook, you probably would have noticed slight changes with me now having a banner, a slight change in layout and in colour schemes, and now looking more professional than before. A new feature which is available on the blog is a kind of rating system at the bottom of each blog post. You have the option to mark the blog as Funny, Interesting or Boring, but be nice please.
Anyway, for my Facebook readers, here's a link for you to look at the new look. www.im-called-stuart.blogspot.com

Another blog shall come tomorrow, a part two of the 'celebration', and then after that there will be a special blog before returning to normal service with plenty of rants for another year - hopefully!

P.S That's a new thing too, just to add the more 'personal' touch.

Be Banished to Big Brother

As you may have notice, a regular theme with my blogs (apart from the depressing love ones) is my dislike of Reality TV shows, and moan because I usually get sucked into watching them. However, that is not the same with Big Brother, and never has been. I have watched very little Big Brother over the past 10 years, and I plan to continue not watching Big Brother. However, because we live in a society where the media likes to tell us things, regardless of whether we want to hear them or not, and peoples’ lives are so dull, that watching people moping around a house for 3 months in classed as 'entertainment'; I hear a lot of gossip about it.

I have three main sources of information about Big Brother. One is friends who for some reason seem to love Big Brother, and will talk about it with other people who watch Big Brother and reminisce over the previous days shenanigans, who will dump who, who will be evicted next and also who they predict to win. Another is radio, where some presenters are also huge fans of this show, and constantly feel the need to blurt out over the airwaves their opinions of what has happened and constantly say 'If you're not watching it, you should' - But I won't. The third is the Internet. It doesn't matter how hard you try, you always get some form of exposure to it, whether you're just on the news websites, catching up on the days happenings or on Facebook reading people pointless status changes (the subject of my next blog).

I'm very sorry for being cynical, but really it's in my nature. You see, I don't really think being stuck in a room full of cameras and people you don't know and won't like for a few months, being part of reality. Now, mistake me if I'm wrong, but Big Brother falls into the Reality genre. The only bit of reality in the show is that they have a kitchen with food in it. I could go broader and say that dumping 10 celebrities into the jungle with a film crew isn't exactly reality either. Neither is a film crew following the 'day-to-day lives' of Katie and Peter or Kerry Katona. Reality TV is really not the correct genre to put it into. Cheap, Humiliation TV - Yes.

I do have reasons for disliking Big Brother, apart from the one above. Remember that lovely women, who graced us with her presence on TV and in Magazines not a few month ago? I forget her name... Oh, that's right - Jade Goody. They even had the cheek to make a Jade Goody Big Brother special, to commemorate her life, as if they couldn't annoy me enough. If this show never existed, she would be completely unknown to me and most of the civilised world. She would have gone about her normal boring life as a dental nurse in Essex and would have died a normal dignified death without all the media attention. She has become, unfortunately, a role model of the 20th Century, and I fear for education in the future. I don't want any future children of mine to learn about Jade Goody, or even have to hear that name, and if they do, I will have to tell them the truth about the vile women that once lived off the media, and it would break their little hearts and they'd have nightmares every night for the next 5 years, and it'll all be the fault of Big Brother. Sorry for being blunt, but I've taken the Jade Goody rant a bit differently this time.

Anyway, another reason for not liking this show is Scrubs. Because of Big Brother, Scrubs is hardly ever on Channel 4/E4 at the moment. I've had to go cold turk-ey. I've gone from watching 2 episodes a day to watching none a day, just like that. Luckily, they timed it just right, so I can at least say that I've seen every episode of Scrubs, apart from Series 8, which hasn't yet been aired in the UK anyway. The point is that Big Brother took away my Scrubs. Simple.

However, if you want to look at it from a positive side, you could say that Endemol had done more to make the streets safer than Jacqui Smith ever did by locking up those 16 prisoners, I mean contestants. It's not as if the contestants have ever had an intellectual conversation, it's sometimes a wonder they manage to string a sentence together when slagging each other off. The fact that a Big Brother challenge was for two of them to legally change their name by deed poll shows how low down the ladder of intellect. One of them changed her name Dogface and the other changed his name to Halfwit. Now if you were looking through peoples CV's, choosing who to hire, those two names would certainly not be on the pile of possibilities.

The contestants still in the house don't, or at least didn't last I heard, know that Michael Jackson had died. However, to quote Charlie Brooker from a few weeks ago, "If we was to make a list of things Big Brother contestants don't know, this would be a very long" blog. And last week, they put in another 5 new housemates into the mix, and already, within a few days, two have walked out. One because there was no-one in the house who he wanted to talk to, and I think he should be hailed as the cleverest, or at least the most observant contestant they've ever had in the Big Brother house. Although, at the same time, you could say, 'Well what was he expecting to find? Stephen Fry sitting in the corner calling him over for a friendly chat by the fire place?’

Which leads me onto a thought, maybe they should do a Big Brother meets University Challenge special, where all the contestants are university graduates with degrees in Quantum Mechanics and Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. Sure it may not be quite as 'entertaining' as the current Big Brother format with people on benefits and strongly opinionated hairdressers (not that I'm undermining people in those categories, I'm just generalising here), where people don't get along, argue and date, but it'd make a nice change from all that, but even then I still wouldn't watch it, so what does it matter to me?
Even the people from Channel Four who introduce the show don't even seem care anymore. A few weeks ago I heard one of them say "Now on Channel Four, you can watch a bunch of random people asleep if you want to...". And that is what it is half the time. During the night, when they're sleeping or just getting ready for bed, you get a live feed of the house, on your living room TV. That's a bit perverted, watching people sleep. You have to be either very addicted to Big Brother or be mentally unstable to watch that the whole night through.

Why are we currently on series 10 of this now awful and boring show I hear you thinking? Well, it’s because writers of normal scripted television shows, cost money and also are very unimaginative. They can't think up new ideas, so they recycle old ideas, and jazz it up a bit to make it look new and fresh. For example, the BBC has commissioned a new Sitcom. I say new, it's actually Only Fools And Horses, but a bit different. It's what they are calling a prequel, where it will follows the life of Del Boy as a teenager. TV bosses have to decide whether to waste their money on silly ideas like that, or cheaply make reality shows, and seeing as we're currently going through a credit crunch, it's usually the latter.

And there we go, and nice cynical blog, ranting about Big Brother, and yet again Jade Goody as well. I'm considering doing a blog special, where I consolidate all my rants about Jade Goody into one big blog. That's something for me to do, should I run out of blog ideas in the near future.

So, on that long note, I shall say Toodles m’dearys
xXXx

Oh, and here’s a shameless plug for you, have a look at this website; it’s my newest creation, a web comic. http://im-called-stuart.smackjeeves.com/

50 – There’s Something Disturbing About Children Chanting 'We Are Coming'

Welcome to my 50th blog, and the chosen subject for today is Torchwood. I have a habit of only doing blogs on things I dislike, people I'm not keen on, the media and how it's run and finding the negative points in human nature, such as love. I thought, for a bit of a change, this cynic would do a blog on something I did rather like, thus why Torchwood is the chosen subject.

Last week Torchwood did a week long story line for Series 3. Monday's episode was entitled 'Children of Earth - Day One', Tuesday's episode was 'Children of Earth - Day Two' and so on, until Friday with 'Children of Earth - Day 5' being the finale. I really wanted the voice of the Geordie guy who does the Big Brother voiceover, or Marcus as his mother named him, to come on say the title of each episode. That would have made me chuckle, but he didn't so I had to do an impression of him saying that myself, everyday.

The story line was, to put it simply, the children of Earth being controlled by drug-dealing aliens in an attempt to scare the world into giving them 10% of the child population of Earth in return for not killing everyone and Captain Jack Harkness being killed and resurrected many a time. This is his party trick really, someone will shoot him, and then he'll come back to life. Essentially his life would be a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto, if he was real, which he isn't.

I actually don't like this. I think everyone who watches Torchwood or Doctor Who, knows that Jack can't be permanently killed, and he will always come back to life, so we don't need to keep having it demonstrated to us. I didn't count how many time he was killed last week, and I wish I had, because to me, it seems that the writers are not the most imaginative bunch; keep using the same bit time and time again. They would kill him off for the suspense of 'Would he come back to life?' which we all knew he would. It just gets boring. It ended up very similar to this - "Oh Jack's Dead, Alive again, he's dead again, no wait, he's alive, oops he's died again - clumsy fellow, what a surprise, alive again" and so on and so forth.

Anyway, forgetting that, I did actually thoroughly enjoy the short but sweet series. The story line was actually very good, apart from the occasional boring bit which just dragged on for too long. The series also gave the viewers a chance to practice a whole range of emotions from disgust to sadness and confusion to shitting ourselves. Pretty much everyone can agree that the scenes in day two, after Jack had been blown apart and his body started to grow back, was rather shockingly, confusingly disgusting.
After that the viewing girls were giving a treat as some would call it, and got to see his penis, if only for a few seconds. Every woman with Sky+ would surely have used it.

I think everyone can also conclude that the finale was a very emotionally based episode, and I'm not afraid to admit, I actually got a bit tearful. For me, I think the most emotional bit was when John Frobisher (The Secretary to the Home Office) got a gun and shot his family then himself, to stop them from having to suffer being taken by these Aliens. Other emotional bits in the series finale were when the army were taking the kids and the parents screaming, as well as when Jack's Grandson died, as a result of Jack saving the world again.
That's right, in this series; we also found out that Jack had a daughter and also a Grandson, just to make the series that bit more emotional. And as if that wasn't enough, Ianto dies in the arms of Jack, before Jack dies again that is, but don't worry, he did come back to life, but Ianto didn't.

There really wasn't much Alien action in those five episodes, which was a bit of let down really. For a sci-fi drama, there really wasn't. A lot of emotion, that makes it a drama yes, but otherwise it was just a lot of people sitting around tables talking, talking to silhouette of an Alien in a glass container, people with Welsh accents running and Jack dying. You see, I find it really hard to like anything on TV these days because I'm just too cynical about everything. I read too much into everything, and I'm very good at 'Knit-picking'; picking holes in everything.

I even found a continuity error, albeit a small one, but towards the end of episode 3, Mr Dekker, or the guy who was always wearing the brown coat as he may be more commonly known, was in one camera angle counting on his hands, but in another angle, he wasn't.

It seems the credit crunch has hit the big BBC dramas. With Doctor Who being put down to 3 episodes this year and Torchwood being put down to 5, without a huge amount of special effects. That's why it's been more emotion based rather than the normal action-packed episodes where they run around shooting Aliens or having sex with them as the previous 2 series have been. If you think about it that way, it was a bit of a cheapskate really, but hey, nether-the-less, it wasn't too bad.

That was blog 50 then m’lovelys, but blog 51 shall come soon.
Toodles m’dearys
xXXx

The Past Seven Weeks Have Just Flown By...

I know I've already done a Britain's Got Talent blog, but another is deserved, because every time Piers Morgan came on the screen and said some crap, I just had 'Twat' pop up in bright, red, flashing lights - and for the record, I believe that Mr Methane (the farting guy) taught Piers Morgan to talk out of his arse...

I am intrigued as to what happened to Ant & Dec last night, because they didn’t seem to be on top form – well Ant wasn’t. He’s look for the evening seemed to be a bowling pin, with freshly painted black hair. His features also seem to be slipping further down his face. Dec seemed to be carrying him really, as well as the show, and it’s not a usual thing for me not to say positive things about Ant & Dec.

Something else which is annoying me is the amount of singing on Britain's Got Talent, and that is including Susan Boyle, because that's what 'The X Factor' is for, for British singing talent. Britain's Got Talent should be used as a way to celebrate the 'Diversity' (See what I done there...) of talent that we have here in Britain, from dancing groups, to violin players, to complete and utter freaks, with unusually large earlobes. I shall comment on the acts from the first of the semi finals, with my cynical view.

So, Diversity were the opening act for the Semi-Finals, and I must say, the best act of the night, and luckily they got through, and it must be the first time I agreed with Piers Morgan on something, but I'll try not to make it a regular occurrence, otherwise I may have to shoot myself with a gun loaded with shame. I like these street dance acts; I think they are really clever, because I could never do that, and at the end of their performance, with them incorporating people picking up the phone and voting for them in their act, was pretty darn clever choreography.

We had Natalie, a 10 year old (I think) who had quite a mature voice for someone her age, and she was good. The one thing I don't like about all these child singing acts is the fact they are children, and I'm against them being shoved in front of the camera by their parents and forced to sing to an audience otherwise they don't get their meal served on their favourite plate. I believe that if they are good when they are young, they will be excellent when they are older, so why can't they wait until they're sixteen and shove them on X-Factor. Luckily, she didn't get through - however she did cry live on telly, but not to worry, it was past her bed time.

We then had time for some surreal 'dancing', with Darth Jackson coming onto the stage, with a trademark white glove. It was a piece of very basic choreographed danced, with it really only involving him and some other people in costume moving across the stage. We also had SueSon, who was a violin player. Nothing out of the ordinary, she wasn't playing whilst eating fire, or playing with a venomous snake, she was just playing a violin - something rather a lot of people can do these days - so nothing that special. After her performance though, Simon Cowell said ''I'd sacrifice friendship over success any day", which I think is a good quote, which sums him up really and that is the reason for his success – no friends.

For Britain's Got Imported Talent - The Belly Dancer impressed the two guys with her assets, but Amanda buzzed not because she was jealous of her body, but because she was concerned about the Queen not appreciating Charles and her boys slobbering over the sight of her. I'm assuming she wasn't talking about Prince Andrew though... All I can say is that I'm glad there was a desk in front of Simon and Piers.

For some comic relief, in the form of the village people and another dance act, we had 'Faces of Dance', in which they put on faces of famous people, while dancing - this time to 'In The Navy'. First we had the pleasure of seeing Obama and Gordon dancing, summing up Britain and America's relationship, which was then strangely followed by The Queen and Prince Phillip dancing along. Next up was Ant and Dec, in which the camera turned to the real ones laughing, and then onwards to the faces of Jordan and Peter for some satirical dancing as I liked to call it. Last we had Simon and... Well Simon, and another Simon, and another and another, and in fact the stage then became infested with Simon Cowell's, dancing with their tops off.
The reactions from the judges involved Piers being less smug, because he wasn't included and made 'jokes' showing his jealousy, then Amanda who was dribbling more than what the other two did around the belly dancer, and making many sexual innuendo's because they had a six pack. Then Simon Cowell was just very big faced... Literally.

We also had a guy called Mick Hell and his fiancée, who’s chosen backing music was Marilyn Manson - Tainted Love, which I think perfectly described their relationship. He was basically a guy who stuck a drill up his nose, held an axe between his legs using his ear lobes, and took a chainsaw to his fiancée who was yielding a cucumber. I can only assume he was trying to kill her so he didn't have to marry the women who looked like she had been sacked from being Santa's Lil Helper because she kept putting drugs in the toy trains. In an attempt to be funny though, Mr Twat said 'Can you use the chainsaw on Simon', but luckily the audience didn't laugh, so he was quickly put in his place.

The final act was Susan Boyle, who did get through to the finals because of YOU, the British public, doing exactly what the media told you to do – yet again. You all voted for her because the media keep shoving her in your faces so much you've actually grown to 'like' her and feel sympathy for the confident bitch. The media attention she's got from both sides of the Atlantic is pathetic, but now she has too much confidence. Personally I think her and Piers should run off together because they are obviously perfectly suited, and he resorted to claiming that she was the saviour of the world, spreading hope to 58 million computer screens. Twat.
Anyway, within the first 5 seconds she went off key twice, but I must say she made a good recovery, but she was still a disappointment. And she does look terrible. If you thought Paul Potts was bad, you haven't seen anything. I would describe her look as a potato with the roots as hair and two slugs for eyebrows. At one point, the camera angle made it look like she had light shinning out of her arse... Or was it her face... It is so hard to tell. And when Ant & Dec announced she was the winner, she done the chicken dance across the stage and continuously thrust her hips at Piers. Not a pretty sight.

I really do not like Piers Morgan, and as you may have guessed, I'm not exactly a fan of Susan Boyle. I believe she is my replacement for Jade Goody. She has made it big just because she has a big mouth and because she was on a reality show, which she is more than likely going to win - unfortunately. I look forward to a future where my blogs will be less about dead reality TV stars, and more about reality stars which take form as a potato.

But Declan Donnelly promised us another semi tomorrow night. The dirty boy.
Toodles m’dearys
xXXx